


Tethered

by Tierra469



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Rickyl if you want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierra469/pseuds/Tierra469
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night they slaughtered the Termites in the church, Rick finds himself feeling very much alone and lost - untethered.  Luckily, his gravity returns to hold him down. Aftermath of "Four Walls and a Roof," Episode 5.03</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tethered

Rick had his ways to cope, to shake off the adrenaline, the violence, the anger. Sometimes when things went down they had to run, and that helped. But if not, if there was nowhere to go, he would slip off into the woods or behind a building and shadow box frantically for as long as it took to come down, or until the shakes started. Just how crazy he got depended on how much adrenaline had blasted through his veins, and a few walkers rarely spiked him anymore. But the night on the side of the road when he’d had to chew out a man’s throat… well, that was followed by a workout worthy of Rocky Balboa. He’d been glad it was dark so nobody could see what he was doing. He worried a bit that he was the only one doing it. They already thought he was nuts, so what the hell? But when he found himself soothing Michonne’s or Carl’s nightmares in the wee hours, he often thought he should share what he knew.

There never seemed to be time.

Tonight, nobody wanted to hear it—of that, he was certain. He’d turned from hacking that fucking cannibal to pieces and gone straight out the side door of the church, still gripping the machete. Not before he’d seen the way that Glenn and Maggie and that Tara girl had looked at him—the same way that Lori had looked at him once upon a time, after he told her he’d killed Shane. Like they didn’t know who the hell he was anymore. Like maybe he’d lost his fucking mind. He took it out on the kudzu vines across the road, hacking furiously for a few moments, until he heard Michonne’s harsh stage whisper behind him.

“Cut it out! We need your help!”

So he’d gone back into the sanctuary and thrown his remaining fight-or-flight buzz into dragging the bodies outside. He could see that Sasha and Abraham were doing the same thing, perhaps unconsciously, their movements exaggerated and a bit manic, faces set with grim determination. When they finished piling the six Termites up by the road, he walked several laps around the churchyard until he felt he could go inside again.

Someone had scattered pages from hymnals over the bloodstains on the rug, trying to sop up the gore.

Beyond the barest of requests, an assurance that everyone was ok, and a settling of who would take watch, no one spoke to him. They averted their eyes, in fact. At first, it was ok—he couldn’t bring himself to talk to anyone when he was so amped up anyway. But later, he found himself crouching against the wall near the back of the sanctuary, feeling very much alone. Dim light from a couple of candles and lamps near the altar cast long, flickering shadows around the room. He could hear voices murmuring, quiet rustling. His children were asleep. Michonne would be on watch outside, and his people were trying to calm down, settle, get comfortable, get some rest as dawn approached.

He was hoping he’d felt the last of the tremors—the cold shakes that grabbed his muscles and wrung him out for moments at a time, left him feeling weak and vulnerable. This was when he needed human contact, but none of these humans wanted anything to do with him, he thought morosely. No one had asked if _he_ was ok.Selfishly, he considered waking Judith up for a cuddle—but even that would be forced and would probably end poorly at this hour.

Why _should_ anyone worry about him?He reminded himself that everyone in the building had just faced death yet again. That Bob was dying in the next room with Sasha at his side. That Glenn and Maggie and Tara were leaving with Abraham and his crew in the morning. That Carol and Daryl were still missing...

Rick had avoided thinking of Daryl since he and Carol had disappeared the day before. He’d told himself – and snapped at Abraham—that surely they would be back. But why had they gone off without a word? He couldn’t help but fear the worst, and fear was something he couldn’t afford lately. If it wasn’t fear, it was anger; how could Daryl do this to him? Had he been wrong to trust Carol again?

He soothed himself by remembering Daryl with him after the incident with Joe and his thugs, by the roadside. After the bloodshed, when he was done silently jumping and swinging at trees and punching the ground, he’d crept back to the car to find Michonne and Carl safely inside, and Daryl sitting in the dirt, back against the car door, waiting for him. They’d spent the rest of the night without a word, just two comrades in arms, sitting together, shoulders touching. When a lingering tremor or two took hold of him, Daryl reached a hand out to touch his arm, or his belly, leaving his fingers there lightly until the shaking passed. When the sun came up, it was Daryl who urged him to clean up his bloody face, thinking of Carl. Rick had called him “brother,” and couldn’t begin to thank Daryl for how he had stepped out of the darkness the night before and offered his own blood for that of his friends. He wanted to try, but he knew he’d never find the right words.

“Brother” didn’t quite cut it. He thought about the wings on the back of Daryl’s vest. “Guardian angel,” maybe? Rick snorted softly to himself, almost smiling.

Then he must have nodded off, because suddenly he was waking up to a soft voice next to him.

“Hey.”

Rick lifted his head off his bent knees and turned to see Daryl squatting beside him, facing him. He blinked hard—was it a dream? The archer’s eyes glinted darkly through his tangle of hair, studying Rick, his mouth set in a grim line.

“The hell you been?” Rick mumbled, gravel and emotion in his throat.

Daryl sighed as if someone had let the air out of him. “To Atlanta and back. Lost Carol. Found Beth. We gotta go back and get ‘em both.”

_“What?”_

“Found a kid knows Beth. Good kid. He’ll take us.”

_“Found a kid? You brought him here?”_

“Decent kid.”

“Where is he?” Rick craned his neck to look past Daryl, irritated and amazed that he’d bring a stranger here tonight, of all nights—but all was quiet and still behind him.

“Outside talkin’ to Michonne. Jesus, I asked him the questions...” Daryl quietly propped his crossbow against the wall, then twisted around, planting himself on the floor next to Rick, drawing his knees up in imitation of Rick’s posture. Rick looked at him hard, and Daryl turned his head to meet Rick’s eyes, his expression inscrutable as usual.

“Why’d you just take off like that?” Rick asked, sounding more petulant than he’d meant to. _I needed you_ went unsaid, but understood.

Daryl pulled the side of his lip between his teeth to chew on it a moment. “Sorry,” he answered. “Was sittin’ on the roadside with Carol and a car came flyin’ by—one like the one that took Beth. So we jumped in Carol’s car and followed. Didn’t have time to leave yer a note.”

_Carol still had a car??_ Rick decided he didn’t even want to go there tonight. Nor did he want to talk about what happened to Bob, and the fact that he considered even worse might have befallen Daryl and Carol. He wasn’t sure he could handle hearing what _did_ happen to Carol. He definitely didn’t want to talk about the bloodbath he’d just facilitated inside the church. It was all too fucking exhausting. So he simply turned away and nodded, hanging his head.

Hardly moving, Daryl slid closer somehow, until their shoulders were just touching. “You ok?” he asked out of the side of his mouth. That one gesture nearly moved Rick to tears, cracking through the thin veneer of ice still covering the lake of vulnerability inside him.

Rick nodded again, and suddenly Daryl’s finger was under his chin, lifting his head. Rick flicked his eyes to the archer’s face, and saw Daryl’s lip curl into a small smirk, as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a nasty handkerchief, handing it to Rick. “Crazy-ass motherfucker… yer covered in blood _again_ ,” he murmured.

Rick frowned, pretending he didn’t find Daryl’s words actually kind of heartwarming. Taking the kerchief, he swiped it over his bearded face a few times, despite the fact that the blood on his face had long dried and the cloth was crusty and stiff already. He didn’t want to know why. Maybe from the last time Daryl had offered it to him for the same purpose.

“Thanks.”

Daryl shoved the kerchief back in his pocket.

“ _You ok?”_ Rick asked, feeling suddenly guilty that he hadn’t yet.

“Be better if I get a little sleep.” Daryl looked around them and spied the cushions on the nearby pews, pushing himself to his feet to grab a few and lay them down in the aisle side by side. “Here,” he said, gesturing to Rick to lie down.

“Naw, go ahead,” Rick replied. “I can get my own.”

“Plenty o’ room for us both,” Daryl insisted, flopping down in the aisle next to the pews, leaving Rick a couple of feet against the wall. Slowly and stiffly, Rick left his fetal position next to the wall and joined Daryl on the floor. They barely fit there shoulder to shoulder, and Daryl quickly rolled to his side, allowing Rick a little more space.

“This is pretty cozy,” Rick noted. “I’ll get my own an’ you can have more room.”

“There ain’t no more,” Daryl told him quietly. “Everybody else took ‘em already. I got the last ones.”

“Oh… ok.” He glanced sideways at Daryl, who gave him that studying look for a minute, then began to get up. Without thinking, Rick shot a hand out, encircling Daryl’s wrist with his fingers. “Hold on… don’t go.”

Slowly, Daryl laid himself down again—but Rick kept his hold on the man’s wrist. “It’s ok,” Rick said. “I don’ mind. Stay right here.”

“Alright,” Daryl drawled softly, sounding a bit bemused.

Rick slowly released his wrist. “You think Carol’s ok?”

“Got hit by a car. They took her to some hospital downtown—Grady Memorial. Kid said they could help her.” Daryl sighed again. “Kinda looked bad,” he added sadly.

Rick felt a pang of sympathy for Daryl, along with his usual strong urge to fix things. It was a better feeling than self-pity. “We’ll find her,” he assured his friend. “We owe her. We’ll make a plan tomorrow.”

Daryl grunted in reply and they both fell silent. Rick stared at the ceiling for awhile, the candlelight growing dimmer as one of the candles guttered and hissed and finally extinguished—along with his thoughts about rescue missions. Something about the high ceiling above, the flickering light, made him lightheaded. He figured it was also the empty stomach, and maybe the adrenaline come-down. But lately, more and more, he got this occasional floaty feeling. Like he needed to be tied down, or he might rise up like a hot air balloon. Might blow away in a breeze and pieces of him scatter like leaves. He felt _untethered,_ which sometimes felt scary, but sometimes exhilarating. Idly, he wondered if it were a physical phenomenon, or a spiritual one. He wasn’t sure he still believed in souls, but if he had one, it sure felt like it was trying to leave his cursed body.

_What if he just let go?_ If that’s what dying is like, he thought, it sure doesn’t seem so bad. He toyed with the idea of just letting himself float, of not fighting it, of seeing if he could indeed reach the ceiling. Then would he keep rising, or would he stop and look down on himself lying on the floor next to Daryl… on Carl and Judith in the next room…

Thinking of his children jolted him back to earth, and his body gave a jerk, waking him from a half-dreaming stage and leaving him with a slightly panicked feeling.

“Hey,” Daryl croaked, and Rick felt warm fingers touch his arm. He couldn’t float away—not yet. Couldn’t leave his children, couldn’t leave these people, even if he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t all end up leaving _him._ And if his soul might really leave his body, his body would then get up and do unspeakable things and he’d be powerless to stop it. No, he needed to tether himself for tonight, he thought.

Reaching over, he clasped Daryl’s wrist again and pulled the man’s hand toward him, laying it over his stomach. Breathing in and out slowly, he felt the weight of it, the warmth on his belly as it rose and fell with his breath. It felt so grounding. Impulsively, he lifted his shirt and slipped Daryl’s hand underneath, letting it lie directly on his skin, above his navel.

The big hand felt like a soothing hot water bottle, and Daryl spread his callused fingers and pressed down a bit, sliding closer to relax his arm. Rick could feel the radiant heat of Daryl’s body close to his side, could smell cigarettes, stale sweat and old leather. The smell conjured thoughts of the homeless man that he used to pick up in front of the library on cold nights and transport to the shelter—in a life he could barely remember anymore. Now he was with that homeless man. Hell, now he WAS that homeless man. But he was warm and present in his body, and Daryl was warm and present close by, and that was good enough for tonight.

“Sure you’re ok?” Daryl murmured.

“Do I feel alive?”

“You ain’t cold and dead.”

“Then I’m ok.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few months ago, and was trying to decide whether to call it "Tethered" or "Untethered." Then I read Andy Lincoln quoting Scott Gimple as saying that Daryl was Rick's "tether," his "emotional anchor." Hence "Tethered." Ha - no Scott Gimple, I will not get out of your head!


End file.
